Russia’s property registry hid data on real estate belonging to FSB and Defense Ministry leadership, ‘Open Media’ reports
The Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre, and Cartography (Rosreestr) has hidden data about real estate belonging to members of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Defense Ministry leadership, as well as properties belonging to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, from the Federal State Information System (FGIS), Open Media reports.
At the beginning of October, the Telegram channel Zhaba i Gadyuk, which reports on corruption, discovered that the FGIS no longer contained information about a plot of land Sechin owns in Barvikha (Moscow Region).
“Rosreestr deleted information about Sechin’s place in Barvikha”
Zhaba i Gadyuk
Using records from the state property registry, obtained during work on other reports, Open Media found that data on the following holdings is also no longer available in the system:
- Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu’s home, which activists from Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (the FBK) uncovered in 2015.
- Real estate belonging to Deputy Defense Minister Ruslan Tsalikov, which, according to the FBK has estimated value of one billion rubles ($13 million).
- The home of Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.
- Real estate belonging to the Head of the FSB Directorate for Moscow and the Moscow Region Alexey Dorofeyev, which was featured in an investigation by Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov on the funeral industry.
A video mapping the properties identified in Ivan Golunov’s investigation into Moscow’s funeral industry
Meduza
Open Media explains that you can find out who owns real estate hidden from the Federal State Information System by ordering records through Rosreestr’s site or through a Multifunctional State and Municipal Services Center (MFTs). However, this requires the property’s cadastral number and can take up to five business days.
In 2016, the FBK reported that Rosreester had removed the names of the sons of then Attorney General Yuri Chaika from documentation on the family’s real estate holdings. Instead, their names were replaced with the placeholders LCDUZ and IFYAU9. These jumbles of letters and numbers were later replaced with “Value Missing.”
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- Before he became Russia’s Attorney General, Igor Krasnov received a high-end apartment from the presidential administration. This information was later hidden in state records.
- LSDUZ Chaika and IFYAU9 Chaika The sons of Russia’s attorney general were renamed to random numbers and letters. And it’s stupid funny.
FGIS EGRN
The FGIS is a tool on the Rosreestr website that allows users to access information on property owners contained in the Unified State Register of Real Estate (EGRN). Journalists have used this particular tool, as have activists from Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (the FBK), to investigate the expensive real estate holdings of various government officials, Open Media explains.
Sechin’s Barvikha house
Rosreestr listed Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin as the owner of a plot of land in Barvikha until 2018, when his name was retroactively removed from the record and the “owner” was listed as the Russian Federation. Vedomosti first reported on Sechin building a house on this land plot in 2016 (the FBK photographed the construction site from a drone). Sechin then filed a lawsuit demanding that Vedomosti take down the article; a Moscow court ruled in his favor, ordering the newspaper to delete the report from its site and destroy all remaining copies of the issue in question.